Creating a Home- Urban Jungle Living Room Makeover

Growing up I moved about every two years- fourteen times in total. I honestly don’t think I could tell you how many schools I went to over the years, or how many houses I’ve lived in without consulting my family. It was normal to me to always be the new kid and to never get attached to a house because I knew I would be leaving. It sounds sad, but it really wasn’t. It’s made me into the person I am today; I’m highly adaptable, I can make myself feel comfortable anywhere, and it shaped the way that I consider people I love home instead a specific place.

So, when I moved into this house I bought I always considered it a starter home. I wanted to make it comfortable, so I did away with the popcorn ceilings and realtor beige walls but I hadn’t planned on customizing it for me. I did that once in high school and it was SUCH a pain to paint over and sell. But I realized recently that while those I love are truly my home, I was doing myself a disservice by allowing this to feel temporary, to not set down roots, and to let my home feel like I was waiting to sell. So I decided to jump in with both feet and completely redo my living room and the attached dining room!

Now this was a process- I knew vaguely that I wanted to go geometric with the paint because I loved the idea of a statement wall and I know my aesthetic is ‘neutral jungle’ because let’s be honest, ‘lots of plants’ is definitely the only way I know how to decorate. SO I spent some time over on Pinterest and these sweet kid’s rooms with multiple paint colors with crisp lines kept catching my eye. So I started there. I originally wanted to use three colors from Sherwin-Williams my ‘hero’ color that covers the simple statement wall that wraps into my dining room and up the stairs ‘Privilege Green’ (yes, I HATE the name too, but the color is perfect), Scanda Blue, and Blissful Blue, a jewel tone blue and a light blue, respectively and then last minute decided to add Clary Sage into the mix. I used painter’s tape to sketch out my design and then taped it off with Frog Tape to make sure I painted the perfectly crisp lines I was looking for!

Pro Tip: (I’m not a pro but it makes a HUGE difference!) When looking to get perfectly crisp lines with no paint bleeding first paint over your tape with the original wall color and then after that dries paint the new color! No bleeding and no mess!

With the paint finished it was time to figure out what I needed to do to make the space feel like home. In the few years that I’ve lived in this house I’ve slowly collected furniture that I love. Most of my favorite pieces, like my dining table, my beautiful mid-century modern chair, and lamps are all from world market. Their dark wood and moody colors make me happy and I knew I wanted to play off of that. So I needed shelving to ‘match’ I was reached out to by Ornamental Moulding and Millwork and they offered to send over some shelves that could be used as either floating shelves or fireplace mantels and I immediately fell in love! The natural maple wood shelves with iron accents were beautiful on their own, but I made the (VERY HARD!) decision to stain them to match the dark wood in my furniture. I went with Dark Walnut by Varathane for a single coat and was SO pleased with how the color turned out!

It was finally time for staining! These shelves were so easy to put up with their included cleat that I secured them into studs and mounted them on the wall all on my own- you can’t get better than that! I popped my geometric diamond shelf on the wall, re-hung my geometric planters (I have both ceramic and glass planters) and was ready to style the living room! It was super fun zooming around the house collecting things that I wanted to display. Plants, crystals, a few teapots from my collection- these shelves showcase some of my very favorite things!

I popped back up my wall art- I have a beautiful French glass map I found at World Market years ago, a custom wall hanging from my lovely friend Mel from Treats with a Twist, and the cutest toddler art you ever did see! My triptych in my dining room is actually art made by some of the toddlers in my life. I gave their parents a color palate and let them finger paint! Those paintings were popped into frames and I had super sentimental, affordable art! And with those little bits and bobs my space was complete and I couldn’t be happier.

If you are curious to watch the whole process, I chronicled it on my YouTube channel and I’ll pop the video below! Please do let me know which space in my home you’d like to see me redesign next!